The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-08-31
HATS ANDTHEIR HISTORY.
STORIES OF HEAD COVERINGS IN
TIMES PAST
The Tall Beaver" that Invaded Europe
from America-Important Parts that
Hats have Taken in Political History.

w neH III DeCOnleS necessary Tor man TO
buy new straw hat he puts 1t off as long as
possible. Then he goes to his halter. takes
the first hat that is given him, tries it on.
says it's too small, and after the salesman
has passed out one a size larger and declared
it just fit, he wears it home. He will be
told by his wife that it is the most unbe-
coming thing she ever saw on his head
But in a few days she becomes used to see
ing it and forgets that she has ever criticised
it. When autumn comes, and he buvs hat
for the winter, she will similarly criticse
that
An article that should endeaver to speak
of the various fashions of hats worn by
women would fill even the twenty-paged
Globe. Over four centuries ago, in Chau-
GERS time, women wore hats, he tells us,
AS broad as is buckler or a large
Many time has the style changed since,
sometimes narrow, then broad again, high
crown, low crown, no crown at all Mean
while, mems headgear underwent various
changes, until at last the cylindrical-shaped
hat came in, apparently to stay.
One of the first accounts of fashions in
dress is in the Bible, where a description is
given of the casting of Shadrach, Meshach
and Abednego into the fiery furnace. These
men were bound in their coats, their hosen
and their hats and their other garments"
and this is probably the first mention of hats
in sacred or profame history.
The hat was an article of wearing apparel
that it ttook many centuries to introduce
into Europe, the East being far ahead in
respect to this fashion-ndeed the return
ing crusaders are said to have brought the
hat to Europe.
In the early part of the sixteenth century
hats began to be made in England and bY
Queen Elizabeth's time they had superseded
caps and softer headgear. Before that they
had. long been imported from Fleming. Chau-
GER, whose" Canterbury Tales" are a true re-
Election of the manners and
FASHIONS OF THE TIME,
tells us that the merchant wore "on his head
Flemish beaver hat, while the gay young
yeoman in the friar's tale had
An hat upon his head with fringes black
When once the English manufacturers had
learned the secret of making hats, however,
they drove out their foreign competitors, so
that Haywood, poet of Elizabeths reign,
gayly sings;
The Spaniard's constant to his block,
The French inconstant ever;
But of all felts that may be felt,
Give me your English beaver.
sarcastic writer of the period, as sharp in
the crown like the shaft of a steeple, and
standing a quarter of a yard above the
crown of their heads, some more, some less,
according to fancy. Or the hat is fiat and
broad in the crown like the battlements of
house-some black, some white, some russell,
some red, some greea, some yellow, never
with one color or fashion two months at an
end. And so common a thing is it that
md
even all inditferently, do wear these hats
The serving man and countrymen,n
however, even after hats became common,
continued for some time to wear the caps
and bonnets to which they had been accus-
toned
Elizabeth could rot compel all her subjects
to wear hats, but she endeavored to make
the Irish do so. The Irish are said to have
worn their hair so matted over their heads
that it could even turn a sword edge and
formed projection over the face something
like a shaggy peat house. This the queen
undertook to change. But the English
colonists who had settled in Ireland wore
hats ;and fearful of being mistaken for these
people, the natives refused to change their
headgear. The queen was enraged; edict
after edict was issued and the shears of the
officers of the law were kept busy shipping
the hair from the heads of those who would
not wear hats.
Charles /. found high-crowned hats the
fashion, worn by women aswell as men, but
before the second Charles came to the throne
the style began to change The rim became
broad, shading she face rather too much for
comfort, especially if the felt were little
worn. Then the brim would hang down, in
which condition the hat received the name
of ''slouched.n When one side of this brim
was turned up it was called cooking it,
end every cavalier would cock his hat in the
1syvla cat i've Lotto
two sides of the brim were turned up, until
in the latter part of the seventeenth
century the third side was added to the
other two and a complete cooked hat was
formed
The Puritan pulpit savagely attacked the
broad brim the jewelled clasps and I'VE vii
famous invention and gross impiety of ye
steeple crown" Yet, in a few years the
steeple crown was the mark and sign of the
Puritans themselves This style was brought
over to America by the Pilgrims. Perhaps
the phrase shoot the hat was derived from
the Indians, who used them for targets. The
same kind of hat, a trifle more tapering, was
worn by
EVERY FIRSTCLASS WITCH,
and was as indispensable as her broomstick
or black cat
The cooked hat was popular for several
generations. 1t was the faverite style with
Voltaire, Frederick the Great and Napoleon,
although long before the latter became
famous it had been uperseded-except in
the army-by the hideous, tall, tapering
chimney pot, a fashion which, curiously
enough, was carried TO France from Amer
lea. The brave young Frenohmen who, I'M
der Lafayette and Rochambeau, helped us
during the Revolution, carried this style
with them on their return. It was seized
upon by the French as having prestige of
liberty and equality, and Immediately be-
came popular. Franklin always attracted
crowd when he appeared in the streets of
Paris wearing this hat, just as Kossuth,
whose hat Americans adopted, was stared at
here.
When beaver skins becams scarce for
the demand from Euroge was enormous, so
that American trappers and Indians re-
ceived large prices for their furs, substitutes
were tried; rabbit skins were used and then
cat skins, The horrible notion prevailed
that, in order to keep the gloss on the
latter, the POOR animals must be skinned
alive, and there being no law against IL this
cruel practice was common in England. The
silk hot at last supplanted the beaver, al
though the fur dealers fought against it as
long as possible, and the poor hunters
and Indians ON our northern borders doubt
less cursed tho day when the fashion
changed.
Derbys, wide awakes, kossuths and vari-
%,rIa in, Init